Following
the article on kefir in our previous issue*, we now introduce you to a variety
of remedies, ancient and modern.

Have
you no single remedy that you "swear by"? Did your mother
not, when you were a child and she suspected that you were "sickening for
something", rub your chest with camphor, or insist that you drink a glass
of warm milk with a knob of butter melting on top of it? (Yuk!!) And
do you not, to this day, nourish the belief - albeit it silently and with some
embarrassment - that it must have been "good for you"?

It's
rather like everyone having their favourite curry restaurant and swearing it is
the "best in the land".

Well,
here are a few of our editorial board members' suggestions, and a few culled from
other people, and we will welcome contributions from readers to go into our next
issue.

As
previously we will provide brief introductions in this section, and follow this
by articles showing how some of these models are used in practice.

It
should be noted that the inclusion of any specific model in this section does
not imply its unqualified acceptance by Nurturing Potential, merely that we
recognise the contribution it has made to the body of knowledge in this
area. Indeed, we both provide - and invite from others - sceptical
responses.

[Click
on subject headings to be taken directly to the article - or simply scroll down
the page]

We believe that
practising simple self-massage techniques on a regular basis, even if only for a
few minutes at a time, two or three times a week, will help to tone the body,
relieve tension, ease muscular strain, and generally improve one’s health.What is not always appreciated, however, is that even when you are in
good health, practising self-massage will help to maintain health and prevent
susceptibility to illness or disease.

It is, after all,
a quite natural reaction, when feeling tension or discomfort in the neck or
shoulders, for example, to rub the back of the neck, or rotate the shoulders.Gentle friction at the side of the head, below the hairline and above the
eyes, can be relaxing when you are “headachy”.Squeezing the calf muscles or stroking the arm, perhaps using baby oil or
talcum powder, is also beneficial when arm or leg muscles are feeling strained.Pressing and rotating the fists into the small of the back, or above the
buttocks, can ease backache and tiredness.

This is not to
suggest that such self-massage is a cure for all muscular problems that may
derive from physical or emotional causes.It
is not.And if symptoms persist
despite any of the techniques described here or in accompanying articles, then
professional help has to be sought.But
very often a simple ache or bodily dysfunction can be eased considerably by
self-manipulation.Because massage
stimulates blood flow it will relax tense muscles and relieve pain.

There are
available, these days, a variety of simple massage tools that help people to
“reach the spots that . . . “ hands alone will not reach, both electrical
and manual.Unfortunately there are
also a lot of people and companies designing awhole variety of tools, seats, and other devices that will separate the
gullible from their money, and that sooner or later find their way into
cupboards or attics, never to be used again.

It is no part of
our brief to extol the virtues of any of these devices.But we do believe that the primary device of all – the hands – may be
taught techniques that will produce positive results.And self-massage, using the hands, can perform a dual function: if the
massage is slow and gentle, it will be effective in relieving tension and
relaxing the body; if it is performed quickly and firmly it will be
invigorating, reducing fatigue and revitalizing the body.

A word of
warning: if the skin is particularly tender, or if pain in a specific spot is
particularly fierce, self-massage should either not be attempted or should be
used extremely gently, without much pressure.

For
centuries the beneficial properties of silver have been known. Prior to World
War II, silver was used both externally and internally for a variety of medical
conditions. Indeed, silver had been used since ancient times to prevent and
treat a variety of diseases, most notably infections. It was used in ancient
Greece and Rome as a disinfectant for water and other liquid storage. In America
in the 19th century, silver coins were placed in the jars of liquid
to maintain sterility or in jugs of milk to prolong freshness.
But the discovery of penicillin and the increased cost of silver in the
1940s account for its fall from grace.

It
was possibly a reaction against the increase in, and perceived excessive use of,
penicillin and its derivatives in the decades following World War II that caused
some practitioners to revert to the use of colloidal silver, a product that most
people had never heard of, and many had forgotten.It is certainly true that modern antibiotics tend to be
overused, with the result that more and more bacteria become resistant to them,
leading to a continual need to find new products.

It
is also undoubtedly the case that silver possesses anti-microbial properties.
Apparently, too, NASA has used silver to maintain water purity on the space
shuttle.And as long ago as the
1920s, charged silver solutions were approved by the American Food and Drug
Administration as antibacterial agents.But
it is important to distinguish between silver itself as a curative agent and
colloidal silver, a distinction that we will pay some attention to later.What then is colloidal silver?

A
colloid is a suspension of sub-microscopic particles in a medium of a different
material. Colloidal silver is metallic silver, electro-magnetically charged, and
suspended in deionised water.It is
tasteless, odourless and non-stinging to sensitive tissues.One of its major advantages is that only a minute quantity of silver is
required in a solution (estimated at one part per 100 million) to be an
effective antibiotic.

While
studying regeneration of limbs, spinal cords and organs in the late 1970s,
Robert O. Becker, M.D., author of The Body Electric, discovered that
silver ions promote bone growth and kill surrounding bacteria. They work by
blocking the respiratory enzyme system while having no negative effect on human
cells. [But see his "disclaimer"
via the Sceptical Response pages]

The March 1978 issue of Science
Digest, in an article, "Our Mightiest Germ Fighter," reported:
"Thanks to eye-opening research, silver is emerging as a wonder of modern
medicine. An antibiotic kills perhaps a half-dozen different disease organisms,
but silver kills some 650. Resistant strains fail to develop. Moreover, silver
is virtually non-toxic."

My
own [Joe Sinclair] introduction to colloidal silver came via a consultation with
a podiatrist in Dorset, in connection with a fungal condition on a big toe.The small bottle of colloidal silver was far from cheap, and the
treatment (self-applied) lasted for several months.But there was an immediate, albeit small, improvement in the condition,
and in eight months it (and the supply of colloidal silver!) had disappeared.[Turn to the sceptical response section to see the corollary to this
story.]

Taken
orally, the silver solution is absorbed from the mouth into the bloodstream,
then transported quickly to the body cells. It is eliminated by the kidneys,
lymph system and bowel after several weeks.This presumes the use of the minute amounts of silver found in colloidal
form.What if larger quantities of
silver are ingested, however?Any silver the body is unable to excrete will build up in
body tissues and can result in argyria—the depositing of silver in the
internal organs, tissues, and skin. Argyria causes the skin to turn gray or
bluish gray and to turn dark on exposure to strong sunlight. This discoloration
is permanent and there is no known effective treatment for it. In addition to
argyria, the intake of very large amounts (far in excess of the amount that
causes discoloration of the skin) of silver can cause neurological and organ
damage and atherosclerosis.[Further details of this problem may be found in our
sceptical response section.]

“Most
cases of Argyria [writes Alexander G. Schauss, PhD of John Hopkins University]
reported in the medical literature over the last 100 years involved chronic
intravenous or intramuscular use of the silver preparations, most often
involving a silver drug prescribed by physicians which in most cases contained
silver nitrate. Other cases of Argyria reported in the medical literature
involve application of silver preparations used for many months or years in thetreatment of the eye or vagina for certain diseases. We could not locate
a single case of orally consumed colloidal silver manufactured in the last 25
years causing Argyria.”

The
American Government report on colloidal silver, from which the above quotation
has been taken, may be seen in full at http://www.happyherbalist.com/fda_report.htm,
which includes the entire quotation from Dr. Schauss.

The
growth in demand for food supplements in Europe increased by a remarkable 50 per
cent in the 1990s.If it didn’t increase quite so dramatically in the United
States, that was only because it had already achieved the distinction of
becoming a multi-billion dollar industry during the 1980s.

In
Europe the issues raised by this expansion in trade led to a number of
resolutions being passed by the European Commission in the need both to
rationalise legislation covering food supplements and to protect consumers from
potential health hazards.

Many
manufacturers in the UK were up in arms about what they saw as an infringement
of their basic right to produce and market “safe” and “healthy” vitamin
and food supplements.Their press
clamour[1]
provoked the European Commission to issue a statement shortly before the second
reading of the resolution in the European Parliament, in the course of which
they stated:

“The
aim of the directive is NOT to ban vitamins but to ensure that products on the
market are safe to be consumed as supplements to a normal diet. We are not
putting hundreds of health food stores out of business. We owe this work to our
consumers while at the same time assuming those supplements currently on the
market are safe. Business has a responsibility to only put safe products on the
market."

In
March 2002, the EU food supplements directive, in favour of controlling
supplements, was approved in the EU Parliament despite heated discussion and
opposition (mainly from the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden). The
complete text may be found here http://www.laleva.cc/supplements/c5-0640-01_en.pdf
as a pdf file, but the major decisions were:

1.Recommendations as to maximum dosages.

2.Lists of vitamin and mineral sources that may be utilized in the
formulation of supplements.

3.A time limit within which member states may issue their own laws to put the
directive into effect. This is normally a year.

4.The establishment of a single market for supplements in Europe.

5.A proposal for the medicinal registration of herbal products.

6.A general revision of the European medicines code including a change in
the definition of what constitutes a medicinal product.

Why
do people take food supplements?Why
has it become such a vast industry?Why
is it felt that a satisfactory diet cannot be obtained simply by eating the
right foods?Who decides that we
cannot survive healthily without a dietary supplement of Vitamin E?Or that St. John’s Wort is essential to breaking the smoking habit?Or that we cannot get enough selenium from our normal consumption of
fish, meat, grains, and plant foods, but need to supplement it with a
commercially produced product if we wish to avoid cancer, heart disease,
arthritis and HIV?

The
fact is that worldwide pollution, global warming, high-density farming using
chemicals and pesticides, have all succeeded in reducing the nutrient value of
the food we eat.And this is not a
recent phenomenon.As long ago as
1940 an American university reported on the depletion of base elements and
minerals from plant life as a consequence of soil depletion, mono-cropping, and
artificial fertilization.

In
recent years an effort has been made to redress the balance somewhat by devoting
part of agricultural production to organic methods – at an increased cost to
the consumer, naturally – but this is perhaps too little, too late.And the lobby for intensive chemical farming is vociferous and wealthy.

In
April 1998 the American Institute of Medicine stated, in a televised broadcast,
that “they do not believe the American public can get the nutrients they need
from their diet.”They
recommended that “all Americans should supplement their diet.”

It
is all very well for cynics who debunk the use of vitamin and mineral
supplements to say (as they do!) “all you need do is maintain a sensible diet,
ensuring that you take the correct variety of food, and making sure that you
have fresh fruit, vegetables, and salad three times a day.”But if that food is deficient in the substances that the body needs to
maintain health, then something more needs to be done if the body is going to
take care of itself.

The
body requires fuelling in the same way that a petrol-driven car requires petrol.When the fuel gauge shows empty you have the choice of going to a filling
station or disconnecting the fuel gauge.The
latter will remove the visible sign that you are in danger of breaking down.But you won’t get very far without a supplemental increment of fuel.

Here
is a chart of the basic vitamins and minerals and their benefits:

*A rather happy circumstance resulted from the article. I
got
a request from a Canadian reader asking how much of my kefir grains I could
spare, as he wanted to start producing kefir commercially in Canada. I
subsequently sent him my entire surplus stock. Not only was it gratifying
that this will be useful, but even more pleasing to contemplate a Canadian
market for a product that (as far as I am concerned) originated in an airplane
trip to Seoul, Korea in the seventies. (Joe Sinclair)